This is the second week of Jean-Claude Juncker’s European Commission: desks are still being arranged, computers connected, and new spokespeople have yet to be briefed. In fact one of this week’s big events isn’t happening: an extra meeting of the Eurogroup conclave of finance ministers that had been planned for Friday is shelved.

Over the jump, you’ll find five things for your agenda this week. Read More »

Brussels watchers should brace themselves for a busy week. D-Day for the European Union’s banks will be upon us, but not before the leaders of the bloc’s 28 members meet to talk about climate change, external affairs and, in usual fashion, the economy. Here are five things to watch in the week ahead:

1. On Sunday Oct. 26, results of the EU’s much anticipated stress test will be published, showing how the investments of the bloc’s largest lenders would fare under a swath of economic and financial shocks. To pass, banks have to maintain a buffer of common Tier 1 capital equivalent to at least 5.5% of risk-weighted assets. Lenders that flunk the stress tests will have nine months to find the missing capital after the results are announced.

The research churned out by the Bank of England’s financial-stability wing usually focuses on where strange new risks might lurk in the financial system, or how to safely dismantle stricken banks.

A new paper, published Tuesday, instead takes aim at how authorities deal with stricken countries, and suggests that repayment terms of government bonds should be linked to a country’s economic performance.

The paper, a joint effort by BOE staffers Martin Brooke and Alex Pienkowski, and Rhys Mendes and Eric Santor of the Bank of Canada, says the bailouts of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus have underscored how poor the official playbook for handling sovereign debt crises actually is. Read More »

European Union leaders are traveling all over this week, talking competition in India, attending a summit in China, and discussing Iran’s nuclear program in Geneva. But there’s plenty to keep us busy in Brussels as well.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and European Commission President José Manuel Barroso are taking the roadshow to Japan. First to Tokyo, Monday, for the 21st Japan-EU Summit, and then, a special detour for Mr. Van Rompuy to Matsuyama – the City of Haiku.

Brussels springs back into action Monday, starting a truncated legislative session that will effectively end in May when voters pick a new European Parliament and the current European Commission, the EU’s executive, prepares to bow out.

The week starts without a bang but on Wednesday, Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier’s will present his proposal for new regulation of money-market funds and a more-general “communication” on shadow banking. Read More »

European and Ukrainian leaders are scrambling this week to send Russia a message: Moscow’s threats won’t prevent the European Union and Ukraine from signing an association agreement – a deal that would open up trade with the EU and commit Kiev to a more democratic path.

Russian leaders, concerned about Ukraine setting course toward Europe, have been threatening to permanently tighten customs on Ukrainian goods should Kiev proceed with the agreement at a summit in Vilnius in late November.

Russia wants Ukraine to join its own trading bloc, the Eurasian Customs Union, which currently includes Kazakhstan and Belarus. Sergei Glazyev, a senior economic advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, recently called signing the association agreement with the EU a “suicidal step” for Ukraine, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. He said temporary tough border checks between the two countries could become permanent if Kiev goes ahead with the pact. Read More »

Top European Union officials will once again spend much of their time away from the Belgian capital next week, starting in Northern Ireland, at a summit of for the Group of 8 leading economies. Topping the G-8’s agenda will be measures to create jobs, support the global economy and fight tax evasion, as well as a political solution to the crisis in Syria. Later in the week, euro-zone and then EU finance ministers will gather in Luxembourg, where they are expected to sign off on a long-awaited common framework for winding down failing banks.

Here’s a fuller list:

On Monday, Commission President José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, will travel to Northern Ireland for the G-8. Olli Rehn, the economics commissioner, will face the European Parliament’s economic-affairs committee for a discussion on the commission’s fiscal recommendations for EU governments Read More »

After months of careful deliberation, the European Commission has finally found the perfect institution to take on the tricky task of winding down failing euro-zone banks: itself.

The commission is “best placed” to become the “final decision-making authority” on bank resolution, the European Union’s executive wrote in a summary of its plans for a single resolution mechanism that was seen by The Wall Street Journal. Resolution is the second leg of the euro zone’s ambitious banking-union project, a cornerstone of the currency bloc’s effort to overcome its three-year-old debt crisis.

While details of the proposal could change ahead of its formal publication later this month, the commission offers two reasons as to why it is the perfect home for the new mechanism. Read More »

European leaders wrestled over Syria in Brussels Monday, with some pushing to loosen the arms embargo and others arguing that would be disastrous for the opposition. But a third camp’s top priority was that the European Union remain unified on the issue. Read More »

About Real Time Brussels

The Wall Street Journal’s Brussels blog is produced by the Brussels bureau of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. The bureau has been headed since 2009 by Stephen Fidler, who was previously a correspondent and editor for the Financial Times and Reuters. Also posting regularly: Matthew Dalton, Viktoria Dendrinou, Tom Fairless, Naftali Bendavid, Laurence Norman, Gabriele Steinhauser and Valentina Pop.